Haptos Proprio, One’s Own is Palpable

This work explores my own personal experience with movement and relating to my environment as a small woman, as well as haptic visuality, kinesthetic empathy, and proprioception. Haptic visuality is a concept defined by Laura U. Marks, author of Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses (200), as “a kind of seeing that uses the eye like an organ of touch”. Haptic filmmaking is that which makes the viewer feel like they are touching what they are seeing, and I aim to emulate it in this piece. Kinesthetic empathy is the ability to experience physical and/or emotional empathy merely by observing the movements of another human being. This can be a very powerful tool for connection, and relating to others who might usually exist outside of our own experience. I hope for the audience to have a kinesthetically empathic experience while witnessing this installation. Proprioception is the sense of the relative position of parts of the body and the strength or effort being employed in movement. This to me is the definition of body awareness; a sense of where a body is in space and how it relates to the physical things, or bodies surrounding it.

I see Haptos Proprio as an improvisational dance; the bodies on film dance with the film itself, the bleach, the light from the projector, all the layers of fabric, and the dancer(s) in the space. Each element is echoed in the other elements. The movements become palpable in an array of dimensions, suggesting the feeling of movement in addition to showing movement.